Obscenity on Rockaway Turnpike

By Michael Orbach

Issue of Nov. 7, 2008 / 9 Cheshvan 5769

Driving on Rockaway Turnpike toward Brooklyn on Motzei Shabbat, a Cedarhurst woman was surprised to hear her three-year old son pipe up from the middle seat.

“She’s not wearing any clothing!”

The young mother glanced up and regretted it immediately. She found herself staring at a large billboard atop a “gentleman’s club” upon which one of the professionals employed inside is prominently featured more or less unclothed.

The young woman and her state of undress are perhaps unremarkable as compared to ads for more mainstream products that appear in magazines and on TV. But to parents who attempt to shield children from the seamier aspects of the secular world, it is a large understatement to call the billboard inappropriate. To those parents the new sign is inappropriate in a way that the Titanic was simply a poorly organized cruise.

“It just goes against everything we teach our children. It’s porn,” the young mother told The Jewish Star.

“It’s horrible. You walk down 42nd street and this is what they hand out.”

“It’s five minutes from my house. I live in a high-tax area. This shouldn’t be anywhere near my house. It was horrible. It’s a route that I take very often with my family,” said the woman, who asked to not be named.

The Jewish Star has received numerous comments and complaints about the sign.

Calls about the offending billboard have been flooding into Councilman James Sanders’ office. Dan Andrews, press secretary to Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, said their office has also received calls about the billboard. He said the City Department of Buildings, which regulates billboards, has been asked to determine if it’s up to code.

To some, the sign is part of a much larger discussion about what is permissible and what is forbidden; what is allowed in America and what is allowed in Torah-observant homes; what is allowed in the public sphere, but invades the private, and what parents wish to protect their children from and to what extent that is possible.

“I understood in one second, in a flash, what goes on in Meah Shearim,” said Avi Fertig, a Woodmere resident who also drove down Rockaway Turnpike on Saturday night, past the sign. “I just didn’t want to be there.”

One well-known community member who admitted that he had not yet seen the billboard, questioned the extent to which a public fuss is justified.

“Does the Orthodox Jewish community have a voice in what appears in ads on the train or newspaper? This is America. If people are troubled by a billboard, then they should take a different route or move to a neighborhood where there are no billboards. I have seen scantily dressed women on billboards on the LIE near the Midtown Tunnel. This is America, not Bnai Brak. I have also seen scantily dressed women in the Five Towns. Some of them may even be Jewish ... Frum ... Should we deny them the right to walk on Central Avenue?”

Phone calls and emails to the Platinum Club were not returned.